President-elect Biden will nominate California attorney general Xavier Becerra (photo, left) for Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), the New York Times reported on Sunday, December 6, 2020 (read CNN’s story here).
Becerra served 24 years in Congress before being elected state attorney in 2017 (read his bio here), where he vigorously defended Obamacare.
He was known to be under consideration for this job, so his nomination isn’t a surprise.
This removes Becerra from a shortlist of U.S. attorney general candidates published by NBC News on November 30. The other people on that list are Sen. Doug Jones, Sally Yates, and Deval Patrick (read that story here). Names mentioned in other sources include Tom Perez, Merrick Garland. and Lisa Monaco.
Biden is known to favor Jones, and “Senate Republicans have signaled they would support” him, NPR reported on Nov. 19 (story here), and Democrats would not be giving up a Senate seat, because Jones was defeated on Nov. 3. He gained fame by successfully prosecuting former Klansmen involved in the infamous 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed 4 young black girls (read his bio here).
Yates (bio here), a deputy attorney general under Obama, is well-known for her witness role in the House impeachment hearings against Trump, and Patrick (bio here) is a former Massachusetts governor. Perez (bio here) currently chairs the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and was a labor secretary under Obama.
Garland (bio here) is a federal appeals court judge was cynically blocked by McConnell and Senate Republicans (because, they said then, justices shouldn’t be appointed in presidential election years), and Monaco (bio here) is a former assistant attorney general and also served as Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser.